Sodium-ion battery startup Natron ceased operations this week, ending the company’s 12-year quest to commercialize its technology in the U.S.
The company had $25 million worth of orders lined up for its Michigan factory, but it couldn’t deliver them until it had UL certification, according to Raleigh’s The News & Observer, which reported on the business’s closure because Natron had been planning to bring jobs to the state of North Carolina with its new factory.
However, receiving the UL certification can be a lengthy process, often spanning several months. Natron investors balked at releasing more funds, leaving the startup facing a cash crunch.
Natron’s primary shareholder, Sherwood Partners, attempted to sell its stake but found no buyers. As a result, it’s liquidating the company and laying off all but a small number of employees, who will oversee the wind-down of operations.
The closure is an example of the challenges that come with trying to manufacture batteries without consistent industrial policies. The road from startup to gigafactory often takes a decade or more — a journey that lasts longer than most business cycles — and certainly longer than most investor fads.
Natron is being carved up through a process known as “assignment for the benefit of creditors,” an alternative to Chapter 7 bankruptcy that could result in a speedy — and quiet — sale of assets that forgoes the court proceedings that many liquidations follow.
The company had announced a year ago that it would build a much larger, $1.4 billion sodium-ion battery factory in North Carolina capable of producing gigawatt-hours’ worth of cells per year, creating as many as 1,000 jobs. Natron had focused on stationary storage and data center customers, markets where sodium ion’s lower energy density isn’t as much of a concern.
While sodium-ion batteries have the potential to be significantly cheaper than their lithium-ion competitors owing to sodium’s abundance, their potential has been undercut by a lithium price war in China. In the last two and a half years, the price of lithium carbonate has cratered, dropping 90%, according …